1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sales support system and method providing support for product sales and delivering, having a purchaser terminal used by a purchaser, a seller terminal used by selling company, and a delivery agent terminal used by a delivery agent, these terminals being capable of mutual communication via a communication network, and more particularly to a product sales support system, method, and a computer program for implementing same, whereby batch delivering is performed by giving an instruction for product pickup.
2. Related Art
In a sales support system of the past for on-line shopping, which uses a network such as the Internet, an order for a product is accepted from a purchaser via the network, and the product is delivered to the purchaser at an address that a home delivery service or the like is instructed to make the delivery to. Referring to FIG. 8, a product sales support system of the past was formed by a purchaser terminal 110, a seller terminal 120 disposed at a seller location, a shipping agent terminal 130 disposed at a shipping agent, and the Internet 140 which connects the above-noted terminals.
Using the purchaser terminal 110, a purchaser, who is a user of the above-noted system, accesses a product sales website established on the Internet by a selling company, decides on a product to purchase, and orders the product from the purchaser terminal 110. The purchaser also specifies the address at which the product is to be received, and whether delivery is to be made in the morning or in the afternoon, for example, this information being entered from a display screen on the purchaser terminal 110.
Upon receiving an order, the seller terminal 120 issues an instruction to the delivery agent terminal 130 to deliver the product ordered by the purchaser to the specified address. In accordance with this instruction, the delivery agent goes to get the product from the warehouse or the like of the selling company, and delivers the product to the specified address in the specified time slot.
In the above-noted technology of the past, however, there are the following problems.
One problem is that, because the ordering of the product and the shipping of the product are managed separately, it was necessary for the seller to issue a separate instruction to the delivery agent separately for each order. For this reason, in the case in which a purchaser purchases products from a plurality of sellers, it was necessary for the purchaser to specify the delivery agent for each shipping agent individually, and to pay a delivery fee separately for each delivery agent.
Additionally, even if the purchaser specified the same time for delivery with respect to a plurality of products, because the actual delivery times depend upon the number of jobs held by each of the delivery agents, there was the problem that the purchaser could not leave home until all the products were delivered.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a sales support system and method capable of reducing the administrative burden on the seller.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a sales support system and method whereby a purchaser can conveniently receive products.